Inbound marketing strategies create reasons for the targeted audience to come to you. The sole aim of both the inbound and outbound marketing strategies is to produce a continuous stream of sales opportunities.
It is achieved through traditional methods like telemarketing, events, direct mail, and email marketing in outbound strategies. In the inbound methods, the prospects are attracted through the creation of relevant content and incentives.
This type of marketing is more closely aligned with social marketing, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and content marketing. This is because all these approaches focus on attracting unknown but probable prospects to the business.
Here are a few inbound marketing strategies that are helpful.
Find Your Target Audience
It’s essential to understand who your target audience and what they want. There are many tools available to find the demographics that define the majority of your customers.
Try to take into consideration factors like age, gender, and location. Next, conduct surveys to understand what they love and what pisses them off. Then, produce specific and excellent content keeping in mind those findings.
Have a Catching Headline
When you create content, the headlines always make the first impression. On average, 5-times as many visitors read the headlines as the actual content. Keeping this in mind and considering that there’s a lot of content available online, crafting a very compelling headline is crucial if you wish to grab the readers’ attention.
You should, therefore, take time to craft it in such a manner that it engages your targeted audience instantly and they feel compelled to go through the content.
Make Use of Varied forms of Media.
Going through a plain essay is boring, and there are high chances that readers will abort it midway. Make your content more appealing and engaging by including images, charts, videos, graphs, etc.
If you can also include features that make it interactive, it’s still better. Any of these inclusions are bound to make your content all the more enjoyable. So, don’t ignore the power of the varied forms of media.
Blogging and Guest Posting
Blog posts have the distinction of being the most effective type of content in bringing leads. However, it would help if you focused on your targeted audience while writing your blog posts and consistently post. A survey tells that companies that consistently blog get 97% more leads, and they are 13 times more likely to get a return on investment.
Besides having your blog, it is very helpful in getting backlinks if you guest post on some reputed and authoritative blogs in your niche.
Include Stories in Your Write-Up
Don’t just focus on crude data and analysis. Back it up with some stories to make the content engaging and conversational. Only facts and data will make it dull, dry, and non-engaging to most of the audience. Instead, narrate a story to bring in more audience with what makes your content unique. Combine the art of storytelling with the scientific marketing approach to reap the benefits.
Utilize SEO to the Maximum
Rope in some good digital marketing services that know the tips and tricks to help you become visible by enhancing your search engine rankings. They know how to use the targeted keywords in the content, how to use meta tags etc.
They are updated on the algorithms used by search engines, and they make their strategies based on that. This helps in achieving good ranks and hence visibility.
Make Use of Calls-to-Action (CTAs)
CTA is an inevitable aspect of your inbound marketing strategy. The proper use of CTAs is essential. Who should place it in the right place not to distract the user while going through the content but then should compel the user to make either purchase or ask for additional information subtly? Great CTAs always follow the best practices in inbound marketing, and this itself will turn out to be a lead generating tool.
Design a Responsive Website
To increase your organic traffic, you must have a responsive website. This is important because many of the population today surfs from their smartphones, and search engines prefer responsive websites in their rankings. So, design your website to give an optimal viewing experience across all kinds of devices, including computers, smartphones, and tablets.
Educate your Target Buyers
Once your inbound marketing strategies lead your target audience on your landing pages, they should get all the required information. For instance, if you are selling apparel, the page should have pictures of the apparel taken from different angles in good quality.
In addition, there should be measurement information, product specifications, and reviews of other customers. It should appear to the customer that everything they require to make an informed decision is available right there.
Have Good Presence on Social Platforms
Social Media plays a vital role in inbound marketing. However, you don’t need to be present on every platform just for the sake of being present. Instead, choose a few networks keeping in mind your targeted audience and then conversing with them through your posts.
Free Content Is Important
Free content is essential for building awareness and your brand’s reputation, especially if you are new to the market. So post some fun and educational content for free to drive inbound strategy. This helps in making your prospects connect with your brand before they go for a purchase. This free content can be in the form of white papers, eBooks, blogs, etc.
Summary
Inbound marketing strategies effectively increase the number of your visitors, leads, and ultimately buyers. When crafted and implemented correctly by understanding your targeted audience’s requirements, needs, aspirations, and struggles, their success rate is very high. Unlike outbound marketing methods, inbound methods follow a targeted approach by presenting the relevant information to the right potential leads.
